All 24.0 - Extraplanar Influence
Once the nights of the full moon had passed, the group pressed forwards with greater haste towards the Seat of the Firehawk, the enormous flaming pillar that could be seen for miles in every direction. It did not take them long to reach its base: the fire reached up from what appeared to have once been a small church, surrounded by three or four small houses. It was difficult to tell, as they had all been destroyed beyond recognition. Numerous stone statues stood in the church’s courtyard: life-like representations of all sorts of people of various ages, races and poses. Lucca ,Cohen and Pierce investigated the center of the tiny village, where it looked like a large battle had taken place; Victor, Cress and Ryuji began to look through the ruined buildings. Everyone wanted a good grasp of the area before they entered the church from which the burning pillar issued forth. The gouges and tracks left in the ground suggested animals had fought, and large ones at that; feathers lay scattered everywhere, which Cohen identified as having come from not birds, but from a wide variety of feathered magical creatures. They also found a corpse of a large, non-magical bear. None of them could figure out quite what had transpired here, or why. The ruins of the houses, if that was in fact what they were, yielded no secrets, answers, or inhabitants living or dead. In an attempt to improve his senses, Cress tried to shift to hybrid form. As he did, he felt his mind begin to slip away, so he used his ascendant power to snap him back into his human state of mind; doing so triggered a drastic change in his outfit. Now with an improved sense of sight and smell, Cress continued investigating. A strange, foul smell caught his attention, and he followed it over towards Lucca. After having his ludicrous outfit scoffed at, he prodded Lucca into shifting into a form that sported heightened smell so that he could confirm Cress’ discovery. Noticing the smell also, they pinpointed it to a spot in the air: some creature was invisibly watching them. Lacking any stealth or grace, they both began trying to grab the creature as it eluded their grasp. Eventually, Cress managed to jump up and pin it in his arms, eliciting a small, horrible voice to chastise them. It dispelled its invisibility, and revealed itself as Xerxes, or George, the sandwich-eating imp they had encountered, captured and interrogated years ago on the Kamun estate in Yeto. Everyone gathered around the captured imp to question how he had come to be there and why. Xerxes demanded to be free, to which they did not comply; he struggled against Cress and tried to sting him, prompting him to knock him soundly on the head and knock him out. This gave them the chance to tie him up before he regained consciousness a few short moments later. Xerxes proved as difficult to talk to now as he had years ago, making it almost impossible to tell whether he was secretive, uninformed or just utterly stupid. He demanded a chair to tower over them all, which ended up being Cress’ head, and sandwiches made by the now-dubbed Sandwich Slave, Ryuji. He never clearly answered how he had managed to make it over the ocean to Akroum from Mirilarin, and he made several cryptic remarks regarding how they had ruined everything, and how Victor had apparently broken something. Apparently, Victor’s spell having partially eroded had alerted the caster of the spell, Xerxes’ master, in some way, prompting Xerxes’ arrival to watch them. He declared himself their new leader, and that it was their job to fix all the things they had ruined; their attempts to explain that it was the All, not them, fell on deaf ears. Before they could get any more potential information out of the imp however, a beam of light came down from on high. A female figure appeared, holding a sword and buckler, slowly descending from the sky on glowing wings of light. When she alighted nearby, she looked at them, and her originally calm expression turned dark. Victor and Lucca recognized the being as the angelic Pandemonium soldier from the Seldarin mountaintop: the woman they had freed from the fey trap, and had named Julia since she had given no name of her own. With a scowl and a yell for the devil scum to be gone, she lunged towards Xerxes, who was currently bound and perched on Cress’ head. Panicking, Cress pitched the imp like a ball from his head towards Victor, who just so happened to be standing across from him. He caught the creature with some bewilderment; Julia’s gaze fell on him, and as she did, she squinted with distrust and scrutiny. Holding out her hand, she cast Dispel Magic upon him, temporarily nullifying the disguising magic of his hat and revealing his demonic form. With greater vigour and hatred, she lunged for the pair of them with her blade, and was stopped by Lucca, who yelled at her for breaking her promise never to interfere with him or his again. She countered with the claim that that promise had never been extended to devils, and that she was there because of the planar disturbance nearby. The pair continued to escalate in anger until Ryuji stepped between them, trying to garner peace by stating that obviously the angel had come to help, and that no good person should attack first. Julia chastised him for his collusion with evil, but eventually was persuaded to cease her attack. Meanwhile, Xerxes whispered to Victor his surprise that he was a Kamun, asked why he didn’t say so sooner, and that they should follow the plan; when asked, he couldn’t give a very good description of what the plan was, other than it involved getting reinforcements from Hell, but he was cut off before he could be pressed further. Several people had noticed that a cold feeling had settled over the area, and a colourless flat affect was seeping out from the church, freezing everything as it spread. Even the flaming pillar was affected: the grey aura creeping up the shaft into the sky. The All had arrived. Xerxes was released, and told not to go anywhere; he said that he wouldn’t, of course, because he was their leader now. Julia stated that she would watch them, and help if it seemed truly necessary; if the devils were really trying to stop this alien menace as they said, then she would be the judge of that. Preparing themselves for what lay inside, the group entered the church courtyard. As they approached the edge of the seeping grey aura, they stopped. Victor tested it, and found that it seemed to spread into his feet, but only if he stayed still. If they all kept moving, they wouldn’t be harmed by it. They entered the courtyard, filled with stone statues. Suddenly, Clover cried out and ran to one of the monuments. It was a tall, well-muscled man, holding an axe, and she threw her arms around it, crying. Ryuji went to her, and she managed to explain that this was Tarragon, her lost teammate and close friend. Knowing that they couldn’t stand there, Ryuji called Cress to try and help move the statue, but found that it was frozen in place, likely due to the All. They convinced Clover to press on, that he would be fine for now and that they would come back for him when the All inside were vanquished. They entered through the front door, and were met with a ravaged church, which seemed to have been very plain even before it had been burned and destroyed. At the far end was a balcony with a pair of staircases leading up to where the altar would be; the far wall had fallen away, revealing the sky and rocky landscape beyond, its natural beauty serving as a backdrop for the pair of unnatural horrors that floated on the platform above. There were two Complete, moving their arms about methodically around the base of the pillar, ostensibly creating the life-draining aura that was spreading out. Within the fire could be seen the motionless form of a person, floating in the flames: it was the Firehawk. Without hesitation, the group scaled the stairs and prepared to fight. When the two All noticed them, they stopped what they were doing. With an odd motion, they twisted about and seemed to tear themselves in half. The pieces rearranged themselves into two figures once more, but they appeared different than they had: one was lightly-coloured and moved its arms in a rigid, predictable pattern, reminiscent of the Aspects Piece and Fraction; the other was dark and jagged, and seemed to twitch impatiently. Victor’s yelled, directing everyone towards the dark All, the chaotic evil combination of the Aspects Shred and Shard. As they attacked it, the calm creature again implored them to explain themselves, and why they were refusing their help to bring order. It was ignored; Clover, who had been training Cress rigorously over the last two months, gave her student an opening which he gladly took, dealing a devastating blow to the creature, sending it scattering to pieces on the ground. The fragments collected themselves, however, and merged into its lawful good partner, forming a massive, octahedral behemoth that lashed out at them with its many arms. Julia joined the fray, and the united group eventually stood victorious over the creature. As it fell, its pieces evaporating into mist, they could see the grey aura vanishing, receding from its furthest reaches back towards its epicenter. They had little time to celebrate their victory: they could feel the temperature rising as the flaming pillar began to flicker to life once more. Standing and looking between each other, the question of what to do about the Firehawk was obvious and unspoken. As the heat became more unbearable, Victor stepped forwards and, leveling his sword, swung at their unprotected neck. His blade rebounded, repelled by the All’s fixing aura. As some of the others left, fleeing the heat and the scene, the others watched as Victor waited for the aura to recede. As it passed down the flaming column, it spread from the top of the Firehawk’s head and down their face. When colour returned to the Firehawk’s neck, Victor swung once more. The body was immediately enveloped by flame and the pillar extinguished itself, leaving only a small fire, shaped somehow to resemble a tiny chair. It refused all attempts to smother it, mundane and magical, so it was abandoned as the rest of the group went outside. Once outside, Julia, declaring the planar rift to be altering, said that she had to leave. She begrudgingly admitted that the evil scum were at least making a good show of helping, and, at Ryuji’s request for help, granted some sort of magical blessing to those in the group with good hearts, including Cohen. Once she ascended in a beam of light, Ryuji, Clover and Cress managed to pack Terragon’s still-stone body into a Bag of Holding; meanwhile, a testy Victor demanded to know more about what Xerxes had said earlier about reinforcements. The imp did not explain himself well, and it was very unclear as to whether he didn’t want to divulge information, or whether he was just stupid. His patience tried, Victor killed the obstinate Xerxes with a single swing, sending him unceremoniously back to Hell. With the day’s trying events at an end, the group returned to where they left Itzli and Virgil, where they camped for the night. Category:Advent of the All